Friday, March 09, 2007

A Tale Of Two Scenarios

Two Wednesdays playing Combat Commander with my friend Connor.

Last week, we played a game where the Americans were counterattacking into a city right after D-Day (the map that has the road running down the middle of the long axis), and I lost. I'm coming to the conclusion that it's better to put the machine guns up front instead of in the back, or at least with all of my other units. Every time I do something like this, my units in the front get slaughtered and I lose by a margin roughly equal to their VP value. Hmm. There were some interesting things going on - the scenario starts with the Germans having only one order per turn, upped by one per Time trigger, stopping at three. The game was actually pretty close, with me losing when my strong 2 leader/team/squad stack advanced across the road with the help of smoke, moved adjacent to the US forces holding the objective that I knew was worth a few points, and only then noticed that they had boxed *range*, not *firepower*, necessary for Assault Fire. Connor advanced into the space, played two Ambush cards, and I went down in flames.

This week, we played a scenario where Connor got to be the defender, meaning he could play all of those great fortification cards. Whoops, it's the one that takes place in 1941 Russia in winter and the ground is frozen, so no foxholes, bunkers, etc. He did get trenches. Without really realizing it, he put a trench in the best possible spot, a road going through the thin part in a forest that gave him an excellent view of a good arc on both ends of the board, and the main points were gained by my Russkies exiting the opposite side of the board. I did manage to wipe half of his units out, and was on the verge of moving across the board to take the lead when he drew a time trigger and ended the game (the Sudden Death marker started on the 13 space, meaning that that's when the game ends). I would have needed to get at least three squads off the board, perhaps a team as well, but I was also one unit away from breaking his entire force so I'd probably have strongly considered advancing along his trench line to melee him. Sadly, we never got that far.

I'm hoping that I'll have more chances to win when I play Mike at Gamestorm later in the month. Speaking of which, both he and I have signed up to demo/play the game on Friday morning (Mike's session) and me on Saturday afternoon (12-3pm). If you're at the con in Portland, OR, stop by and say Hi and play a game. Chances are you'll win...